Saturday, October 28, 2006

Return of the Mudslingers - Campaign 2006

They are back

And how! The faceless, nameless organizations that fund slanderous advertisements are back with a vengeance, spending money like there is no end to it. The same people who gave us the "Swift boat verterans" in 2004. The fact is that negative ads pay. As long as voters give more attention to such ads and salacious, inconsequential tidbits than to real issues they will be fed such drivel. Red herrings will be let loose to deceive the voters. Victory of some candidates will be based largely due to impact of such ads and they will go to Washington to give speeches about moral values and deal with the nation's problems. The total spending (by both parties) have already exceeded one billion dollars. By November 7th the figure is expected to be more than 1.5 billion as voters are deluged with ads in the remaining days.

The Democrats have not only to worry about slanderous ads but also the possibility of voter fraud. Diebold machines, for one. In the face of polls that show the Republicans to be in a very weak situation, President Bush and the vice president appear to be too sanguine about the result. Maybe they know something.

Michael Grunwald in the Post: "When the news is bad, the ads tend to be negative," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford professor who studies political advertising. "And the more negative the ad, the more likely it is to get free media coverage. So there's a big incentive to go to the extremes."

"The Year Of Playing Dirtier" - Excerpts:

Rep. Ron Kind pays for sex!

Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face.

It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson's ads, the Democrat also wants to "let illegal aliens burn the American flag" and "allow convicted child molesters to enter this country.

To Nelson, that doesn't even qualify as negative campaigning.

"Negative campaigning is vicious personal attacks," he said in an interview. "This isn't personal at all.

By 2006 standards, maybe it isn't.

On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year's version in many races has an eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion.

At the same time, the growth of "independent expenditures" by national parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.

When the news is bad, the ads tend to be negative," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford professor who studies political advertising. "And the more negative the ad, the more likely it is to get free media coverage. So there's a big incentive to go to the extremes.

The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit. A few examples of the "character issues" taking center stage two weeks before Election Day:

In New York, the NRCC ran an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. "Hi, sexy," a dancing woman purrs. "You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line." It turns out that one of Arcuri's aides had tried to call the state Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.